4 Upcoming Reboots That Must Be Stopped

Despite what BuzzFeed quizzes would have you believe, very few people are kids during one decade alone, and an increasing number of us actually manage to stretch our child phase over several. It's just as well then that the pop culture franchises we grew up with tend to come back to haunt and/or delight us years and years after their initial run. But the fact that they can do this does not mean that all of them should. There are several beloved franchises that, should they ever return in full force, would probably only break our hearts. Here are four of them.

(Note: There are several spoilers for eons-old plot twists in this article. May anyone who does not realize and accept this be eaten by a grue.)

#4. Twin Peaks

ABC

Twin Peaks is one of those rare shows that managed to simultaneously create and peak an entire genre. Its dreamlike atmosphere, well-conceived characters, and quirky dialogue that is at constant odds with the ever-so-slightly creepy overall vibe is responsible for roughly 75 percent of the shows you enjoy, and also that image of David Duchovny in drag that keeps popping onto your retinas at 2 a.m. After the series' initial run, owls could have conquered the world had they realized how terrified we suddenly were of them. For a solid year, every single viewer checked behind their couch for errant BOBs before they sat down.

ABCAnd let's not even discuss the subject of bathroom breaks.

I love Twin Peaks. The show had a profound influence on me when I was a child, marking my transition from a snotty kid that lived on cartoons and MacGyver to ... a slightly older snotty kid that lived on cartoons, MacGyver, and Twin Peaks.

I love Twin Peaks, which is why I want it to never come back.

Why It Should Never Return:

Because it wouldn't be Twin Peaks anymore.

"Oh, boo hoo. Would the actors having a few extra wrinkles tug your itty bitty heartstrings?" you ask. "Of course the show would be different, it's been 25 years. Go read up on time skips as a narrative device, crybaby." To this, curiously cheeky person I just made up for the sake of narrative, I have two arguments: One, fuck you, you don't even exist. Two, I'm not saying the hypothetical Twin Peaks revival can't be a decent show. I'm saying it wouldn't be the same show.

Twin Peaks was always destined to be a short and beautiful thing. Its appeal lies in atmosphere and carefully balanced contradiction -- the coziness of a beautiful, all-American small town contrasted with the sins hiding underneath the surface and the absolute evil that lurks at the edges. The fun came from peeling all those layers of wickedness and absurdity one by one, and it worked like a dream ... as long as there were layers left. Once Laura Palmer's killer was revealed midway through the second season, the final layer was gone, and the core turned out to be a mystical potluck of lodges, spheres, hirsute chaos spirits, and tiny, overdressed arm-deities.

ABC"Won egalkniD gnikcuf reteP ot elor siht esol ylbaborp dluow I."

Treated right, there are still the makings of a good show there, but too many secrets have already been revealed to keep things how they were. Any future episodes of Twin Peaks wouldn't be about exploring the secrets of a fascinating town with underlying darkness. They would be all about fighting said darkness. The final episodes irrevocably tore the sleepy little town's facade down for the viewer, leaving it less Twin Peaks and more Sunnydale. About two episodes in, Buffy and Angel might as well ride into town to kick Evil Agent Cooper in the dick before hitting the Black Lodge to punch everyone.

Which ... actually does sound kind of awesome.

Why It Probably Will Anyway:

Although David Lynch officially denies all rumors of a series revival, stories of him privately discussing it with former cast members have been known to surface. Add that to the fact that some other series creators have been pretty open about their desire to return to the creepy little town, and that Netflix has allegedly expressed tentative interest in rebooting the show, and it doesn't seem entirely impossible that a (possibly Lynch-less) New Twin Peaks will eventually confuse the shit out of viewers.

#3. Masters of the Universe

I realize that the phrase "return" is stretching it a bit here; despite the fact that their heyday was clearly in the 1980s, He-Man and his cohorts have been existing on the sidelines of pop culture ever since. There have been comics. There was the God-awful 1990s space opera reboot. There was the 2002 relaunch and an accompanying decent yet quickly cancelled TV show, and the surprisingly tongue-in-cheek 2012 mobile game.

Although it has managed to cling to existence, the franchise is far from the sort of cultural powerhouse some other popular toy lines of the era have managed to become. Think about it: This is a full-fledged fantasy universe that has somehow managed to avoid a movie in a millennium where The Lego Movie rules our hearts, Transformers ravage our senses every year, and fucking Battleship has had its chance to bomb at the box office.

Designed by 12-year-old Nathan Bitner, Fearless Photog was the winning entry in Mattel's $100,000 Masters of the Universe Create a Character competition in 1985. He was a sentient camera person who was decidedly nonviolent: His power was to suck evil powers out of his enemies, leaving only good behind. It was a novel and creative concept, which is presumably why Mattel took a giant dump on the idea and didn't introduce it in the toy line until 2011, as part of the "their joints move now so give us money, collectors!" Classics Series.

At the core of this story lies the reason Masters of the Universe should remain on the relative sidelines: It is the most irreparably outdated franchise in the entire world. Its universe is a product of a nonexistent time when steroids worked the exact same way on everyone and it was OK to prance around wearing BDSM gear and fur underwear, as long as you carried a kickass sword or had some interesting deformity you could maim your opponent with. Its mythology is much like that of Street Fighter: an over-complicated excuse for bodybuilders to attack each other. There are no redeeming features here, no place for alignment-adjusting camera-faced fuckers who can remove the element of evil and thus the only excuse good people have to smack around people who look weirder than them. Almost everyone in the Universe of the Masters is a combatant by design, save for the occasional magician or lame "spy" character that always ends up getting stomped on until someone's elastic band snapped, don't pretend that they didn't.

Was it a great universe to visit when you were 10? Absolutely. Is it one it's OK to feel nostalgic about? Totally. Can it be revived without summoning continent-shaking douche chills? Probably not.

Via Comic VineBesides, Fisto would never want to bring the band back together because he makes a fortune on ... other areas of entertainment.

Why It Probably Will Anyway:

Current 30-somethings are creatures that are still well in touch with their inner child, yet starting to feel the first tugs of mortality. We basically amount to a huge pile of money that we're willing to burn to briefly escape the cold, patient stare of our ever-so-certainly approaching death by revisiting the rush of our childhood delights. Studios, of course, know this and happily prepare us our fix, usually in a diluted, over-CGI'd form.

With this in mind, it's not a question of whether He-Man, Skeletor, and the gang hit the big screen and attempt to overtake the pop culture world in an all-media assault the likes of which haven't been seen since the 1990s heyday of the once-again-attacking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's a question of when, and more importantly, how. It'll take some time, though: Although there has been a movie in development for a while now, it looks like the studios have realized how difficult the "Tom of Finland meets Manowar" vibe of the franchise is to execute even semi-correctly. As such, the project has been bouncing from table to table for years. The dude currently closest to helming the project is Jeff Wadlow, a fact that is less than comforting to those six people who actually managed to trudge through Kick-Ass 2 without falling asleep.

Still, find a way to get Frank Langella back as Skeletor and we'll all probably wind up watching that movie thrice.